Tips: Why we don't use frequency higher than 50Hz/60Hz?Why we don't go to higher frequencies, like 100Hz or 120Hz, or even 400Hz like on aircraft. This would reduce the transformer and generator sizes even more. The main issue would be in change management if there was to be a change. Because then all our electronic gadgets would no longer work on the mains. Although it would make the design of consumer electronics a lot cheaper if everyone used the same standard. But that would be a colossal task to convince the Americans that their transmission medium is against the rest of the world's standard. It's bad enough that they don't want to adopt the metric standard.

It is generally accepted that Nikola Tesla chose 60 Hz as the lowest frequency that would not cause street lighting to flicker visibly. The origin of the 50 Hz frequency is open to debate but seems likely to be a rounding off of 60Hz to the 1 2 5 10 structure popular with metric standards.